Adult Child

The Abandonment Trauma Queen is back on the pod, and today we're heading into uncharted territory: borderline vs. abandonment trauma. What truly separates the two, and why the BPD label gets handed out way too easily.
Susan Anderson is a psychotherapist and a pioneer in the field of abandonment trauma, and she's spent the last three decades helping people heal. She's the author of The Abandonment Recovery Workbook (a book that truly changed my life) and Taming Your Outer Child. Having worked with thousands of people over the course of her career, she joins me to share what she's learned about telling the difference between BPD and CPTSD.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️What Actually Separates BPD From CPTSD — Why the dividing line isn't emotional intensity, but whether the pain distorts reality into a false narrative.
▪️Why Untreated Abandonment Escalates — How emotional reactivity compounds from one relationship to the next when the wound underneath is never addressed.
▪️Overthinking as an Abandonment Response — Why compulsive rumination is your brain searching for a lost attachment object, not actually solving anything.
▪️Why the Outer Child Fights Change — How the self-sabotaging part is persistent by design and actively wants to stay in charge.
▪️Self-Love as Behavior, Not Affirmation — Why the relationship with yourself is built through concrete action and written dialogue, not by deciding to love yourself.
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🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 47 — Abandonment Trauma w/ Susan Anderson
▪️ Ep 97 — The Outer Child & Abandonment Trauma w/ Susan Anderson
▪️ Ep 161 — Abandonment Trauma Expert Susan Anderson on Rejection and Equating Love with Insecurity
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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
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Shitshow Saturday #127
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The voice in your head won't shut up because if it did, you'd have to feel what's in your body.
Dr. Joe Flanders is a clinical psychologist based in Montreal who specializes in IFS, mindfulness, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. He's also the founder of Refuge, a community of practice built around experiential psychotherapy, and co-host of the podcast "Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose." But despite all his training and years of meditation, it was his own shortcomings as a father and desire to have a real relationship with his kids for the rest of his life that pushed Joe to do the deeper work of healing what insight alone never touched.
AI in Psychotherapy: A Risk Reduction Approach to Human Flourishing
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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
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Mike's first Shitshow episode 👉 SHITSHOW SATURDAY #127
⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
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Shitshow Saturday #127
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A death doula shares what really happens between a toxic parent and their child in the parent's final moments.
Kat Courtney is a death doula and plant medicine facilitator who has sat with dozens of people in their final moments. After a childhood spent people-pleasing a father who only wanted the happy version of her, a near-death experience in her early twenties, and years of using ayahuasca to finally face the family wounds she'd normalized her whole life, she learned that the things we run from don't disappear - they wait. This is a conversation about what surfaces at the very end, when the body lets go and the truth we've avoided our entire lives finally has nowhere left to hide.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️ When Repair Becomes Possible — Why for some people, truly healing a relationship with a parent only happens after they've died, and how to do it.
▪️ The Final Conversation — The apologies and accountability that can come from a dying parent, and why healing is still possible when they don't.
▪️ The Trauma You Avoided Your Entire Life— Why someone who spent their whole life avoiding their pain can suddenly confront it on their deathbed.
▪️ The Power of Ibogaine — Why this psychedelic stands out from others for treating addiction and trauma, and what the treatment process looks like.
▪️ How to Know if a Plant Medicine Facilitator Is Safe — Warning signs and specific questions to assess whether someone is truly qualified to hold this work.
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⚓JOIN THE SHITSHOW — The Adult Child Healing Community
6 weekly Zoom support groups · Discussion boards · Peer connection
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Get the newsletter for community updates, healing insights & early access to workshops.
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💁‍♀️ SUPPORT THE POD
☕ Buy Me a Coffee – help Andrea (and her cats) eat
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Instagram → @adultchildpod
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